The Special Aura of Time, Silence, and Scale
Summer 2021
The United States is a gigantic country, and you don’t really get a sense of its vastness without driving through it. There’s just so much land everywhere. Different landscapes and climates. Each place rich with its own geologic and social history.
Living in the city can be invigorating, but it also warps the senses a bit. When you drive around the country, you realize the vast majority of the land is quiet and peaceful, scattered with ranches and small towns, prairies and mountain ranges.
The picture above is from Arches National Park in Utah. The visitor brochure offers this sage advice: “You can see much from a car, but the special aura of time, silence, and scale may allude you.”
Indeed.
Much like the Grand Canyon, a visit to Arches really gets you pondering the awesomeness of geologic time. The arches took shape over tens of millions of years. Water, sand, wind … and time. These simple elements contain the power to carve mountains and dig canyons.
Humanity is a newcomer on this geologic timeline. Our caveman days were basically yesterday compared to the amount of time it takes to whittle an arch out of a solid rock. For most of our relatively short history, we’ve lived off the land as hunter-gatherers. Our experiments in civilization are still developing. The outcomes are still to be determined.
There’s nothing inevitable about human history, although it often seems like there is a spiritual force at work in the human story. It might be cliché to say it, but I see it in the example of the United States. The founding of this country is somewhat of a miracle. There’s the story of a critical moment in the Revolutionary War, where the intervention of heavy fog in the early morning hours allowed the successful completion of an overnight evacuation, allowing Washington and his men to fight on.
In his first inaugural address as president, George Washington pays homage to “that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect…”:
No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. And in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their United Government, the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities, from which the event has resulted, cannot be compared with the means by which most Governments have been established, without some return of pious gratitude along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage. These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me I trust in thinking, that there are none under the influence of which, the proceedings of a new and free Government can more auspiciously commence.
71 years later, the country hopelessly divided over the issue of slavery, a self-taught lawyer from the backwoods of Kentucky was elected president.
It’s hard to imagine anybody but Abraham Lincoln being able to wage and win the Civil War and pass the 13th amendment banning slavery. Some figures of the time wouldn’t have had the resolve to prosecute a bloody civil war to an unequivocal ending point. Lincoln was determined to bring the Confederacy to its knees. Other figures of the time wouldn’t have had the competence to pull it off. Lincoln’s unique blend of political skills, wisdom, and magnanimity was just remarkable. His fierce ambition, tethered to a grounding humility. His clarity of purpose, wedded to a disarming gift of wit and humorous storytelling. For a leader like Lincoln to rise to power during this most perilous time — well, if it wasn't a result of divine providence, then we got pretty damn lucky.
Of course, Lincoln was not operating in a vacuum. Abolitionists in every shape, size and social status laid the groundwork for this outcome. The Founding documents contained the philosophical and legal frameworks for this outcome. Union victory in the Civil War didn’t automatically bestow equality under the law, but it was absolutely essential for the war to be fought and won, unconditionally, in order to eradicate slavery and set the stage for later gains in civil rights. None of this was inevitable, and post-war reconstruction was a jagged and violent undertaking, but it allows us to believe that there is a Great Author — to borrow another term from George Washington — writing this story.
I step out of my car here, so to speak, because in the immediate moment in history, I find myself feeling demoralized. Everyone seems angry all the time. Every day, a new headline seems to affirm that we are doomed. Things don’t seem to be going very well, and most of us (including most of our elected representatives and the political operatives who pull their strings) seem to be mesmerized by the daily drama that appears on our social media feeds. It’s hard to know how to respond to the decadence and confusion we see all around us.
Looking back in the past, we read about the outcomes of perilous times and they feel inevitable. They’re neatly summarized in our history textbooks, and there will be a quiz next week so you better study. The story of the American Revolution. The story of the Civil War. The world leaders and brave soldiers who defeated Nazi Germany. History is a garment of interwoven threads — sometimes hinging on seemingly random things like the weather.
Looking forward, nothing feels inevitable.
In this age, the sins of our nation are coming under increasing scrutiny, and I think that’s fine. I understand the impulse to want to condemn the whole project. Some of our worst sins are too easily swept under the rug. We’ve been overdue for a blunt historical reckoning. It’s a mistake to try to shield our past, in all its small-minded brutality, from criticism.
But it would also be a mistake to minimize the unique and improbable genius of the American system. The Constitution. The Bill of Rights. The Declaration of Independence. The ethos to live by the rule-of-law. This system was produced by defected human beings, that’s true. Can light not emerge from darkness? Is redemption not among the most compelling of human stories? Alongside heroism and tragedy, I think it is.
Maybe in its completeness, the story of America will be a tragedy. I wouldn’t be surprised.
But I don’t think we should despair and I don’t think we should underestimate the power of small acts of goodwill. Like the elements of nature, small things add up with time.
As George Washington put it: “Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.”
Links and News
Joanna Allhands, who has written extensively on water-related issues in Arizona, recommends we start taking drought conditions more seriously:
We don’t have to be alarmist. But we do need to know and very publicly discuss what might happen should things go south in a hurry. Because in this hotter, drier, more volatile future, they certainly can.
Allhands also wrote about the outcome of the recently completed legislative session, from the perspective of water.
Sadly, for the past two summers we seem to have replaced monsoon season with wildfire season. Here’s an overview of the fires we’ve had so far this year. An ASU professor believes that smoke from the wildfires might be partly to blame for the lack of monsoons in 2020. It seems like there might be more storms this summer? Fingers crossed.
Congratulations to Phoenix Suns General Manager James Jones for winning the NBA Executive of the Year Award:
With Jones leading the Basketball Operations department, Phoenix assembled a roster that posted the second-best record in the NBA (51-21) and the fifth-highest single-season winning percentage in franchise history (.708). The Suns made the NBA Playoffs for the first time since the 2009-10 season. Head coach Monty Williams, whose hiring in May 2019 was overseen by Jones, finished in second place for the 2020-21 NBA Coach of the Year Award.
Go Suns.
Summer Scenes: Flagstaff and Phoenix
Continental Golf Course, Flagstaff
Ma-Ha Tauk Park, South Phoenix
Final Thoughts
Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone is having a good summer.
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If you missed a previous issue, click here to visit the archives. One issue that might be worth checking out again would be the August 2020 issue, The Heat, which includes a short history of staying cool in Phoenix and a sketch of the science behind summer monsoon storms.
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Cheers.